Halloween might not be for a few months, but it is already peak haunted house season in Japan, where seeking a bone-chilling fright is a long-established summer tradition.
Kimono-clad ghosts with bloody eyes convulse in agony and lurch toward visitors at one spooky establishment in Tokyo, roaming around groaning like zombies.
Summer is closely associated with the dead in Japan, because it is believed that ancestral souls return to their household altars during the mid-August “obon” holiday.
Photo: AFP
So a visit to a haunted house is seen as a refreshing respite from the season’s often stultifying heat and humidity — thanks to air-conditioning and the less tangible chills sent down one’s spine.
Emerging from the dimly lit attraction at the indoor theme park Namjatown, 18-year-old Misato Naruse told reporters that she had gone there with her friend Himari Shimada “to get cool.”
“I broke out in a cold sweat without even realizing. That’s how scared I was, I guess,” the university student said beside a drained and speechless Shimada, also 18.
“Last year it was very hot, but this year it feels even hotter. And I wonder how much hotter it will be in a few years’ time,” Naruse said.
Many haunted houses in Japan play up to their refreshing reputation by using slogans such as “a shudder that blows away the summer heat.”
The idea can perhaps be traced back to the Japanese traditional theatre form of kabuki, said Hirofumi Gomi, who has worked behind-the-scenes as a producer of haunted house experiences for three decades.
Lore has it that a few centuries ago, kabuki theaters struggled to lure spectators in summer because many loathed being crammed inside without air-conditioning, but that changed when performers swapped sentimental human drama for full-on horror — aided by tricks and contraptions, similar to a modern-day haunted house.
“For patrons wilting under the heat, dazzling visual effects and gripping ghost tales were more bearable than the subtleties of human-interest stories,” Gomi said. “So maybe haunted houses don’t so much cool you down as make you forget the heat momentarily.”
At the Namjatown haunted house, which is meant to evoke an abandoned, spirit-infested town, organizers are confident about the scary tricks up their sleeves.
“In Japanese, we say: ‘Kimo ga hieru,’ or literally: ‘Chilling the liver’ — a reference to the sensation of getting goosebumps,” said Hiroki Matsubara, of operator Bandai Namco Amusement. “We believe visitors can experience the feeling of being scared, surprised or ‘chilled to the liver,’ which will hopefully help them enjoy a cool feeling in summer.”
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